Tag Archive: Machine: Apollo 13 – Triumph on the Dark Side of the Moon

Ask anyone who was alive in 1969 what their most vivid memory of a world event was and they’ll likely come up with word of President Kennedy’s assassination or the Apollo 11 moon landing. To go back in time and replay the mission events that led up to Michael Collins dropping Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the lunar surface would be nothing but exciting. This weekend we remember that moon mission that did not result in a lunar landing, Apollo 13, a mission that has been called NASA’s “most successful failure” for the achievement of NASA scientists and three other astronauts: Jack Swigert, Fred Haise, and Jim Lovell.

In the summer of 1969 the Nixon administration contemplated that outcome. If something, anything happened to the astronauts on Apollo 11, how would America respond to such a disaster? Nixon speechwriter William Safire wrote a speech for Nixon to be broadcast if Apollo 11 didn’t make it back–specifically if astronauts Armstrong and Aldrin were somehow stranded on the Moon.

To promote a news series on famous letters on the BBC, actor Benedict Cumberbatch read Nixon’s speech–a “what if?” that we’re fortunate never was actually read by the President. Here’s Cumberbatch (affecting an American accent) performing the reading: